


All Over Again

by JulyStorms



Series: Petruo Week: December 2014 [6]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/M, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 11:28:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2810516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JulyStorms/pseuds/JulyStorms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes Petra thinks that it’d be nice if there were such things as adult do-overs: the chance to go back knowing what you know now, the chance to take a different path and see the outcome.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Over Again

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Petruo Week Day #6: “Longing.”
> 
> I didn’t proof-read this, so if you notice any dumb errors please let me know.

Sometimes Petra thinks that it’d be nice if there were such things as adult do-overs: the chance to go back knowing what you know now, the chance to take a different path and see the outcome.

It’s not that she has any particular desire to do her life over, but sometimes, on nights like this—where the air is warm and the night still and things are impossibly calm—she considers the things she’d change if she could.

Knowing what she knows now, having seen the horrors of expeditions undertaken by the Survey Corps…would she choose to never join the military? Would she choose a different branch to ensure her financial well-being? Or would she join anyway because she knows her skill is needed, and it seems such a waste to squander a skill by remaining a mere baker’s daughter?

Auruo would stay the same, though. He’s the one thing she can’t imagine differently, the one thing she’s not sure she could stand to lose in her life. Would she feel the same if she had stayed in Karanese?

His face is half-buried in his pillow, and he’s sort of snoring. She touches his hair, wonders if he would have joined the Survey Corps even if she’d backed out at the last second, even if she’d have joined the Garrison or the Military Police, even if she’d have changed her mind about the military. She doesn’t exist in a void, after all, and neither does he. His decisions would change, too, wouldn’t they? A little bit? Based on her own?

Would he have aged so much if he’d stayed at the mill—would it have been worse? Would he already have died in an accident, or she in childbirth—or would they have married different people? Never married at all?

There are too many options, too many paths. Is the one she’s on the _right_ one? Is there such a thing? She doesn’t know. She _can’t_ know things like that; she’s only human, and human beings have always had a certain fragility about them.

Maybe they’d be married already with a baby had they both stayed in Karanese or joined a different branch of the military. That would be nice, wouldn’t it? She desperately wants that, sometimes, when things get difficult; she craves the normalcy she once singularly knew, and she knows it’s selfish, but she can’t help it. Soemtimes she just—she wants a warm baby in her arms and Auruo complaining about getting up at three o’clock in the morning. It’s silly. It’s ridiculous.

She looks out the window at the impossibly cheerful moon, impossible because two nights ago she’d lost her roommate and her team leader and Auruo had seen a brand new recruit get ripped into three pieces.

She presses a feather-light kiss to the shell of Auruo’s ear as he sleeps, as he remains, for the moment, unaware of the world around him.

Petra allows, for a moment, gratitude to fill her heart. She wonders about other paths, about other outcomes, but there is no way of knowing where she’d be if she’d chosen that instead of this, if she’d taken the objectively easier road instead of the one she’d known from the start would be difficult.

At least this way…she can do soething.

At least this way, she can sit with Auruo, can feel him breathing; she knows he’s alive and he’s well and when he needs her, she can be there—at least for now. She considers the alternatives for a moment as she nuzzles into his neck; he squirms in his sleep, grunting because it tickles as she imagines sitting back home at her father’s house in Karanese, imagines writing Auruo letters, imagines waiting and never knowing his health and never understanding his reality.

But she knows. She knows because she’s going through it, too. It helps them connect.

She settles behind him, an arm wrapped over his waist, her forehead tucked up against the back of his shoulder. She kisses the skin, there. If she’d taken a different path, how different would both of them be, now?

The idea that both of them might be different unsettles her, gives her pause. She breathes out a sigh through her nose and closes her eyes, feels Auruo’s body rise and fall with every breath he takes.

“Would you change anything about your life,” she asks, “if you could?”

He snores.

And she smiles. Suddenly she’s glad that neither of them can go back, can change the path they’re on. But even so, even if the opportunity presented itself, if she went back knowing what she knows now…

Well, she wouldn’t change anything.


End file.
